Frontier Flying Service Piper PA-31-350 accident
Piper PA-31-350 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Kalskag Airport (PALG) to Bethel Airport (PABE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC07LA048
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-31-350
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N200AK
- Operator
- Frontier Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kalskag Airport (PALG), Kalskag, AKTo Bethel Airport (PABE), Bethel, AK
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel exhaustion
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport certificated pilot was conducting a visual flight rules, multi-leg cross-country flight under Title 14, CFR Part 135. The pilot reported that during cruise flight the left engine fuel pressure light illuminated, and when he turned on the emergency pump and switched tanks, the light went out. A few minutes later the right engine fuel pressure light illuminated, he turned on the emergency pump and switched tanks, but the light did not extinguish. When the right engine began to surge he shut the engine down, and feathered the propeller. On short final the left engine began to surge, and he put the gear extension handle in the down position, but the gear failed to fully extend and lock prior to touchdown. The airplane sustained damage to the gear attachment points, and wings when the landing gear collapsed during landing. The pilot said that according to his calculations, the airplane had 1.2 hours of fuel onboard for the 30 minute flight. The FAA air safety inspector who witnessed the defueling of the airplane after the accident, reported that approximately 1 cup of fuel was drained from the left main tank, 1 cup from the left outboard tank, 1 gallon from the right main tank, and 2 gallons from the right outboard tank. The pilot operating manual states that the fuel capacity of the airplane is 192 gallons, and that 182 gallons is usable.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during cruise due to the pilot's failure to refuel the airplane prior to fuel exhaustion. Factors contributing to the accident were the delayed extension of the gear, and the gear being unlocked at touchdown.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC07LA048
- Event ID
- 20070703X00863
- Case number
- ANC07LA048
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d3c21bbce17ca4a88ea1dfbe6d9ef3afc13d83a3fe3fbaa3e0d8521f1cb33c29; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:43:57.527Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N200AK; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, FFSA.